I read Donna Tartt’s *The Secret History* a couple weeks ago and fell in love. The prose, the plot, and the characters all interwove perfectly to create a beautiful, meaningful story. Since *The Goldfinch* received such high praise, including the Pulitzer Prize, I was expecting a more refined, elevated version of her writing from TSH. I just finished it, and I’m underwhelmed and disappointed.
My first complaint is that Theo is completely unlikeable (my opinion, of course; if anyone feels differently, let me know why). I just find it incredibly difficult to find any sympathy for him. He gets himself into bad situations and refuses to take responsibility again and again. We come to hate his father only to find that Theo becomes him. He does little to make me feel much else than annoyed at him.
Also, I think her prose, which in TSH bordered on pseudo-intellectual in an enjoyable way that augmented the story and its themes, feels jumbled in *The Goldfinch*; she writes long-winded sentences full of seemingly profound phrases that all combined into a mush of 770 pages worth of nothing much. What she crammed into the last section in a rather ham-fisted way she could have spent the previous 760 pages developing more concisely (and probably cut out a good 200+ pages to boot).
She literally spells out for the reader what the meaning of the book is supposed to be. I find it ironic that she goes on such a long-winded conclusion about the subjectivity of art and then shoves into your face what her book is supposed to mean.
My final complaint is that Theo’s character arc is underdeveloped. He experiences this revelation at the end… supposedly. How can we believe that Theo, whose character development throughout the novel has been essentially a long, dark, downward-sloping tunnel to self-destruction and suicide, has come, simply by seeing his mother in a dream and having a talk with Hobie, to appreciate life, even in a nihilistic way?
Anyways, this was a bit longer than I meant it to be. Even outside the context of TSH, it’s still a disappointing and unsatisfying read. If I’m reading 770 pages, there’d better be a whole lot of meaning packed in there, you know? What did you guys think?
by [deleted]